[NU Sports] may be a long time to break this streak

[hakirsch at aol.com]

Living in the Bay Area certainly would have preferred SF and agreed that Houston is not high on the list for bowl destinations,but still will argue Philips' job is to get the highest bowl he can get us to. Hard to rank the lower bowls but I do think Meineke outranks Kraft.  He has done a great job of selling us to the Bowl committees and the alums have done their job of buying tickets and spending money. 

Happy New Year to everyone

Harry
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: "SjT \(Stephen J. Truog\)" <sjtruog at yahoo.com>
Sender: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com
Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2011 13:50:16 
To: Scott Zeller, M.D.<scottzel at gmail.com>; NUSPORTS<nwu-sports at tssi.com>
Reply-To: "SjT \(Stephen J. Truog\)" <sjtruog at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [NU Sports] may be a long time to break this streak

I know - it's a tough call. I certainly don't fault our AD for bragging up NU and moving us up in the bowl process -- he's doing an amazing job of promoting Northwestern football.

But ... it was tough to watch our game and then swing over to sunny San Francisco, actual green turf and all the picturesque vistas and beatable UCLA team and not wonder "what if ..." 

I'm sure we will hear from those who attended the game today, but on TV at least, the Houston Meh Bowl had to rank low on NU's bowl experiences. Dallas at least had the historic Cotton Bowl setting, Detroit has a better stadium, San Fran would have had the sights, Phoenix has perfect weather this weekend, Tampa sounded like a first-rate experience, San Antonio was a nice setting with everything nearby, etc. etc. etc.

As for next year, I'm pretty optimistic (and looking at our 2013 and 2014 schedules - OUCH! - next year BETTER be our year!). We lose some big-time seniors, but I think we'll be fine on offense. And the defense has to get better? Right??? Plus, we had some special teams bright spots this year that were lacking in the past. And Fitz is the embodiment of all the class and enthusiasm I want from a head coach on the sideline. 

The problem comes in the rest of the staff -- I'm not so harsh on Hank because he's dealing with a tougher deck, but he needs to get better on playing aggressive and playing smart. We can't just sit back and wait for teams to make 3rd down after 3rd down on us. If we get beat, we get beat, but we gotta go out fighting and take our chances in smart ways. My beefs are more on the offense, where it really appeared today that we "out-thunk" ourselves -- our tempo push hurt us more than ATM with sloppy penalties and missed blocking assignments ... and the rotating QB gimmick was a bust. Put Colter in for a series or so, but alternating by play ruined any rhythm we had and made it predictable when Kain came in what the call would be -- at the end when we stuck with Persa consistently, he then developed a rhythm. We need to get our offensive game plan back to the Walker days where the spread was used to SPREAD the field -- swing the D side to side, test them
 deep and dink them short ...  then get smart about finding the holes and mixing it up. Now it seems like we want to be more Oregon-lite with gimmicks and flash instead of smarts and substance.

But I like our team for next year and our schedule is as good as it will be for a couple of years -- our staff needs to kick it in gear and get back to making smart game plans for NU football in 2012 - use or strengths to help us overcome the weaknesses NU will always have.

Happy NU year!
GO CATS!!!
-SjT
 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
STEPHEN J. TRUOG
sjtruog at yahoo.com
GO CATS!!! GEAUX SAINTS!!!
Super Bowl XLIV Champions!
________________________________



________________________________
 From: "Scott Zeller, M.D." <scottzel at gmail.com>
To: NUSPORTS <nwu-sports at tssi.com> 
Sent: Saturday, December 31, 2011 2:05 PM
Subject: [NU Sports] may be a long time to break this streak
 
Next year is a major rebuilding project as we lose a lot of seniors, then
our schedule gets really tough for the foreseeable future. Not scheduling
many cupcakes anymore. Add that to our admissions office preventing at
least two four-star recruits from committing to the team recently. We might
not be back to a bowl for a long time, much less win one.

Watched in San Francisco in a bar owned by an NU alum, with more than 100
purple in attendance. I'm sure our fans would have packed AT&T Park today
on a beautiful sunny day on the Bay, for a very winnable game against UCLA.
Thanks a lot Mr Phillips, for doing all you did to "move us up" away from
SF to a very difficult opponent in a much less attractive setting, when we
could have been spanking the Bruins instead and ending this streak. As it
is, there is no evidence of any Illinois presence in town, and none of
their fans care (most of my family are Illini and none have any interest in
the game).
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